Universal Credit 40 years on

University of London Computer Centre Newsletter No. 53 March 1973

An alternative, more legible version:

what marketing suggested
what management approved
as designed by engineering
what was manufactured
as maintenance installed it
what the customer wanted

Universal Credit 40 years on

University of London Computer Centre Newsletter No. 53 March 1973

An alternative, more legible version:

DWP v. the Cabinet Office – seconds away

The Department for Work and Pensions  (DWP) want option A – please see Universal Credit and GDS – think twice – and the Cabinet Office want option B. Neither option will benefit Universal Credit but that won't stop them fighting.

Normally there would be no contest between the country's biggest-spending department and the Cabinet Office – DWP spend even more than the Department of Health. You may think it's different this time and that DWP haven't got a leg to stand on, having wasted over £100 million of public money so far on Universal Credit.

You're wrong. It isn't different this time. DWP are still huge and anyway, it's not obvious that the Cabinet Office have got a leg to stand on either, with their "agile"-is-a-magic-bullet and big-companies-are-all-useless-unless-they're-Apple arguments. Just in case these points aren't clear to the protagonists, DMossEsq issued a press release the other day, please see below. That should help.

It promises to be a bitter fight otherwise.

Long-term readers will remember Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, saying: "... soon Identity Assurance Services will be used to support the Department for Work and Pension’s Universal Credit scheme and the Personal Independence payment which, from 2013, will replace the complex and outdated benefit system".

That was on 6 March 2012, at the Information Commissioner's Conference, and of course it never happened, please see Universal Credit – GDS's part in its downfall.

Relations between DWP and the Cabinet Office can't have improved the other day when ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, blogging about his presentation to the Cabinet, wrote: "GDS [the Government Digital Service] is here to support everyone building Digital by Default services, wherever they are. We’ve already had public betas from teams at MOJ and DWP, and I’m excited to see what other teams build. It’s hard work, but it’s work people outside of government are already starting to appreciate".

In support of his claim that "people outside of government are already starting to appreciate" GDS's hard work he refers to a post on the FT blog, What HealthCare.gov could learn from Britain, which includes this:

GDS has avoided becoming fully involved in projects such as Universal Credit, where big data and big government collide. The UK government’s flagship welfare reform is having problems which would be familiar across the Atlantic, such as integrating multiple databases, managing a project with dozens of separate teams and dealing with what Mr Bracken calls “oligopolistic supply chain[s]”.

"Thank you, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken", Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, may say, "for your support and hard work. It has been noticed inside of government as well as outside".

Needless to say but let's say it anyway, that is the flimsiest of surmise.

To get back to terror firmer, there was Mr Maude 18 months ago telling the Information Commissioner that DWP would soon have the benefit of identity assurance services.

Actually it goes back further than that. Computer Weekly magazine told us in September 2011, two years ago, that: "The first service to be delivered using identity assurance will be the Department for Work and Pensions' Universal Credits scheme", please see Identity assurance - how it will affect public services and your personal data. The deadlines came. Identity assurance didn't. The deadlines went.

So a second candidate had to be nominated as the first recipient of identity assurance – HMRC: "There were two announcements about Identity Assurance this week: HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) are going to be the first department to use the identity platform, and updated privacy principles were published for consultation so we can make sure privacy is at the heart of the services we provide", please see This week at GDS, 21 June 2013, and GDS, agile PAYE on-line.

There is still no news about the privacy principles.

And there is still no news about HMRC's planned October 2013 trial of identity assurance for PAYE on-line. What was the result? Did it happen?

You've got to be agile in this business. Be prepared for the announcement of a third candidate to be the first user of GDS's elusive identity assurance services.

Seconds away:

PRESS RELEASE The Universal Credit tragedy 4 November 2013 It is over a year since Frank Field wrote The universal credit programme is on course for disaster. He was right then and he still is. According to an internal DWP report leaked to the Guardian, a decision will be made in the next few days what to do about Universal Credit. DWP are said to have backed themselves into the anomalous position where there are only two options to choose between, Aor B, and neither of them will help, please see: Universal Credit and GDS – think twice http://www.dmossesq.com/2013/11/universal-credit-and-gds-think-twice.html Will DWP waste hundreds of millions of pounds more of public money and add another government IT failure to our unenviable tradition? Or will they turn Act IV of a tragedy into Act I of a new play where Whitehall starts to behave rationally and responsibly? ---------- Notes to editors The word “agile” is endlessly incanted in favour of option B. That’s all it is. A word. A noise made by people clinging helplessly to the mirage of £38 billion of savings to be made by Universal Credit. About David Moss David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. What started 10 years ago as a campaign against the Home Office’s plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK has turned into a campaign against Whitehall’s misfeasance in public office.

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Updated 11.11.13:

Should G-Cloud and the GDS be taken seriously as contenders to run Universal Credit?

First G-Cloud Cookie land: This may indeed be a very sensible approach towards providing a common front-end to citizen-facing on-line and commodity services (like Payroll and HR) that have been unnecessarily "customised". But it is, as yet "unproven" for "heavy lifting" service delivery. Cabinet Office  has not yet demonstrated that it can deliver anything more than comparative trivia (e.g. website rationalisation) - although it has demonstrated that it can help prevent others from wasting money.

Updated 16.11.13:

Who won the battle between DWP and Cabinet Office over ID Policy? 

We know who lost in the battle between DWP and Cabinet Office over ID Policy - the taxpayer and the private sector bidders. Who won, apart from the fraudsters?

DWP v. the Cabinet Office – seconds away

The Department for Work and Pensions  (DWP) want option A – please see Universal Credit and GDS – think twice – and the Cabinet Office want option B. Neither option will benefit Universal Credit but that won't stop them fighting.

Normally there would be no contest between the country's biggest-spending department and the Cabinet Office – DWP spend even more than the Department of Health. You may think it's different this time and that DWP haven't got a leg to stand on, having wasted over £100 million of public money so far on Universal Credit.

You're wrong. It isn't different this time. DWP are still huge and anyway, it's not obvious that the Cabinet Office have got a leg to stand on either, with their "agile"-is-a-magic-bullet and big-companies-are-all-useless-unless-they're-Apple arguments. Just in case these points aren't clear to the protagonists, DMossEsq issued a press release the other day, please see below. That should help.

Whitehall's rethink headache. And the Whitehouse's

That wailing you heard throughout the land last week, the rending of shirts clothes and the clatter of teeth being gnashed – what caused it?

Company		Market cap ($bn)
Exxon Mobil		385.65
Apple		378.25
Google		259.13
Wal-Mart		258.49
Microsoft		241.45
General Electric		236.04
Johnson & Johnson		234.67
IBM		233.68
Chevron		223.04
Pfizer		221.82

Was it the fact that only-one-way-to-go-from-there Apple was knocked off the top spot in the list of the world's biggest companies by market capitalisation?

Probably.

But there is another hypothesis to explore.

Even though it shouldn't have been, the world was shocked by the failure of the Obamacare website. Millions of dollars spent on it, and it didn't work. And the seven or eight of us who follow these things were also a bit agitated at the failure of Universal Credit here in the UK, millions of pounds spent on it, etc ...

How can so many experienced professionals work so hard and be paid so much and yet the ObamaCare and Universal Credit IT systems don't work?

The thoughtless answer that has launched a thousand lazy-minded op-ed pieces is that these big government systems are written by ponderous, greedy, bloated contractors, so huge that if they stub their toe it's two years and a couple of billion dollars before the signal registers with their brains.

This sort of development work should be done by small, hungry, lithe, agile, lissom, innovative, imaginative companies – SMEs, small- and medium-sized enterprises. It's the end of "big IT", ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken told the Cabinet last week, and Washington DC the week before.

But then the logic gates short-circuit and the previously bien-pensant brain starts to overheat.

After all, they don't come much bigger than Apple and Google, and what are they famous for? In a word, "agility". Imagination and innovation.

Bigness isn't necessarily the problem.

And then the agile, innovative, little CloudStore only went and fell over for four days. Smallness isn't necessarily the solution.

Intellectual over-heating, having to think again and re-assess the evidence, ... Bound to give you a headache. It's a poser, isn't it. No wonder a few shirts went for a burton amid the general brouhaha of wailing and gnashing.

Whitehall's rethink headache. And the Whitehouse's

That wailing you heard throughout the land last week, the rending of shirts clothes and the clatter of teeth being gnashed – what caused it?

Company		Market cap ($bn)
Exxon Mobil		385.65
Apple		378.25
Google		259.13
Wal-Mart		258.49
Microsoft		241.45
General Electric		236.04
Johnson & Johnson		234.67
IBM		233.68
Chevron		223.04
Pfizer		221.82

Was it the fact that only-one-way-to-go-from-there Apple was knocked off the top spot in the list of the world's biggest companies by market capitalisation?

Probably.

But there is another hypothesis to explore.

Even though it shouldn't have been, the world was shocked by the failure of the Obamacare website. Millions of dollars spent on it, and it didn't work. And the seven or eight of us who follow these things were also a bit agitated at the failure of Universal Credit here in the UK, millions of pounds spent on it, etc ...

How can so many experienced professionals work so hard and be paid so much and yet the ObamaCare and Universal Credit IT systems don't work?

Universal Credit and GDS – think twice

"Agile" is not a silver bullet

Universal Credit is a damsel in distress

but the Government Digital Service is not a white knight

A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) report has been leaked to the Guardian, please see Universal credit: £120m could be written off to rescue welfare reform.

Universal Credit (UC) is DWP's system to spring the poverty trap and make work pay.

UC is in a mess. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on developing the system and there is very little if anything to show for it.

What to do?

According to the leaked report, ministers and officials (and contractors?) will make a decision in mid-November. There are, again according to the leaked report, just two choices:

A	Stick with the existing contractors and make UC work.
B	Start again with new contractors, using a more "web-based" approach to the development of UC.

Option A is said to be "not achievable within the preferred timescales", "unrealistic" and "vulnerable to security flaws". It is also said to offer poor value for money.

Option B is said to be "unproven ... at this scale" (21 million claimants), only 100 claimants would be on the newly written system by the summer of 2014 and until then ministers would have "no idea" if it would work.

To any rational person, the conclusion must surely be neither of the above. Either option, A or B, would be indefensible, unbusinesslike and irresponsible. On the evidence available, anyone choosing either A or B would be guilty of misfeasance in public office.

The Guardian article says "ministers may order both plans to be pursued at the same time and wait to see what happens after six months". A and B? That is presumably a court jester's way of indicating the absurdity of the situation.

The article finishes by saying that DWP still insist, against the odds, that UC will "bring a £38bn benefit to society".

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It is not the case that there are only two options available. That is an inaccurate, false way to describe the situation. There is the option of neither A nor B.

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It is also not the case that ministers would have "no idea" at the outset whether option B would work. They have already been warned that it is untested at the scale of UC. There are in addition all the reasons given below for ministers to be sceptical.

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What on earth is a "web-based" approach?

According to the Guardian article: "Sources working on the programme say Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, who is responsible for the government's digital team [i.e. GDS, the Government Digital Service], is in favour of the fresh web plan".

GDS are noisy advocates of the so-called "agile" systems development methodology and they orchestrate a brand-building PR campaign casting themselves as the engagingly raffish, dynamic, modern champions, succeeding where fuddy-duddy traditionalists fail. It's not clear why they expect anyone else to be enthusiastic about "agile" when you consider that:

1	Despite GDS's agile approach, the G-Cloud CloudStore was "temporarily unavailable" to its users for four days last week. A four-day outage in a relatively tiny system like CloudStore is one thing. Four days without UC could be a disaster.
2	GDS have started their assisted digital project several times over the past two years but despite that agility there is still no sign of progress. Just like DWP, they may try to press the reset button repeatedly with UC.
3	A GDS-style web-based UC would be no more immune to security problems than the alternative.
4	Working with them on an individual electoral registration (IER) data-mining pilot, the Electoral Commission found that GDS: Caused delays. Made it impossible to assess the results of their pilot by changing procedures in mid-stream. Failed to support some participants in the pilot. Failed to provide the Commission with the cost of their work on the pilot, making it impossible to say how much the pilot cost or how much live operation would cost. Provided poor data specifications/inconsistent postal address specifications, leading to a failure to identify eligible voters who are not registered. The Commission's conclusion is that a national roll-out of data-mining is not justified, it won't help IER – GDS's efforts identified both people who are already on the electoral roll and people who are ineligible to vote as needing to be prompted to register.
5	GDS's identity assurance programme depends on a new pan-government "ID hub" which has been certified by no-one and which is impossibly meant to offer both anonymity and an audit trail, simultaneously.
6	GDS acknowledge their responsibility for the identity assurance programme (IDAP), which was first meant to go live in the autumn of 2012 and then the spring of 2013. There was no explanation for the absence of IDAP then and there is no news of the IDAP trial which was meant to be conducted with HMRC last month, October 2013. On 21 January 2013 GDS held an event called The future is here at which they announced that they had 400 days to transform government, which might suggest that IDAP should be live in February 2014 but there are no guarantees and it may yet transpire that the future was, in the event, somewhere else all the time.
7	The privacy principles which should govern GDS's digital-by-default plans for public services have still not been agreed. GDS have been quite cavalier with privacy. And their public consultation followed none of the recognised procedures.
8	GDS's attempt to depict public expenditure in a series of "infographics" was described as "either an attempt to obscure the data under the guise of transparency or the work of people who have no knowledge of data visualisation ...The charts in every case are either inappropriate for the data or appropriate but ineptly designed". Among other things, the charts omitted interest on the national debt.
9	GDS promise that their development work will be "open" and say that openness is "the best way to make sure that we’re accountable for the things we build. As our design principles say, if we make things open, we make things better". They promise that but do not deliver.
10	Four IT professors reviewed GDS's IT strategy and in their draft findings published on 7 January 2013 they declare it to be inadequate. Among other things the professors say: "It is appealing to hope that a radical change in digital service delivery can be accomplished simply through adoption of open source technologies, introduction of agile development practices, and contractual support for encouraging more SMEs with their high-levels of energy and diversity. However, this view is much too simplistic and highly risky".
11	It's not just the opinion of the Electoral Commission and of the four professors that GDS ignore. The National Audit Office have expressed doubts about digital-by-default, so have the BBC, and so have 52 members of parliament in an early day motion – they, too, have been ignored. How would GDS avoid people with no web skills becoming excluded by default? They don't say. Nor have they made any progress on assisted digital, please see 2 above. Digital-by-default is being promoted in denial of reality. Like any service organisation, GDS claim to put the users' needs first and they were even allowed to make that pitch to the Cabinet on 29 October 2013. But it looks as if UC claimants who can't use the web would be ignored by GDS.
12	The repeated claim that GDS's award-winning GOV.UK has replaced all central government department websites and the websites of several agencies and arm's length bodies requires some qualification. In particular, HMRC's website has not been incorporated into GOV.UK despite claims to the contrary.
13	The awards won by GOV.UK are for publishing government data. GDS's ability to cope with high-volume, complex transactions like UC which calls for quite different skills is unknown.
14	The billions of pounds of savings that GDS promise depend on making a minimum of 40,000 public sector workers redundant and replacing them with computer systems. Ministers have already been warned that agile is untested at these scales. DWP may find that there is no saving to be made – they may have to pay for both the agile digital-by-default public services computer systems and the staff. The four professors warn that public services are complicated transactions. More complicated than buying a book on Amazon, for example. It may simply be impossible to replace the mature judgement of human beings with a computer system.
15	The "web-based" approach includes certain fashionable components. You have to be besotted by Apple's products and you have to embrace cloud computing, please see 1 above. Cloud computing is marketed as a utility. For people struggling with fuel poverty this will hardly be a recommendation – we will not want to add IT poverty to our woes. GDS elected to host GOV.UK in the cloud. Placing the details of 21 million UC claimants in the cloud will expose their data to hackers against whom, judging by the daily stream of stories in the media, there seems to be no defence. The founder of Google has warned everyone of the dangers of cloud computing as has the Managing Director of Microsoft UK. Putting your data in the cloud means losing control of it. What do GDS have to say on this matter? Nothing.
16	The "web-based" approach has its exemplars, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and eBay/PayPal among them. The veneration of these companies may not be shared by the rest of the population. Their aggressive tax avoidance in some cases and their reliance on slave labour in the third world in some cases could make it politically embarrassing to pay them to act as custodians of the nation's benefits data.
17	If public services are to become digital-by-default – and that is GDS's mission – then everyone must have an on-line identity. Thus the identity assurance programme, please see 5 above. To that end, GDS have appointed eight so-called "identity providers" for the UK. Everyone will be enjoined to maintain one or more personal data stores (PDSs) on the web. PDSs are being marketed by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills through their midata initiative as a way to "empower" consumers and a way to make the economy grow – they imagine that a thriving market in apps will develop advising us all what to eat and what films to watch. People should be warned that downloading an app may be little different from downloading a virus. It is not clear that consumers will be empowered by midata or that PDSs will bring economic growth with them ...
18	... What they will bring, to all intents and purposes, is ID cards, without the card. It is now mandatory in the UK to register to vote, registration is to be on-line and we will identify ourselves using our PDSs. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister, talks of a new way to conduct the national census, presumably via PDSs and/or the IER electoral rolls. UC claimants in a web-based scheme would have to identify themselves on-line via their PDSs in order to claim. Does the government really want to go through the ID cards debate all over again?

The UC choice facing DWP may be presented like Beauty and the Beast.

The disgraceful performance of the big IT suppliers and the ministers and officials who are meant to be in charge of them is an obvious Beast. But there are 18 reasons at least to make DWP – or whoever is making this decision – pause before casting "agile" as Beauty.

There is a decision to make in the next few days that could waste hundreds of millions of pounds of public money while doing nothing to help the putative 21 million UC claimants. In making that decision, remember, "agile" could add to the nation's unenviable stock of expensive government IT failures just as much as the alternative.

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Update 5.12.13

The jester wins – in the event, they seem to have opted for A and B:

Written Ministerial Statement Thursday 5 December 2013 THE DEPARTMENT FOR WORK AND PENSIONS Universal Credit progress The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith MP) ... Once fully implemented, Universal Credit will account for £70 billion of benefit spending each year, and bring a £38 billion economic benefit to society over 10 years ... - As part of the wider transformation in the development of digital services, the Department will further develop the work started by the Government Digital Services [B] to test and implement an enhanced online digital service, which will be capable of delivering the full scope of Universal Credit and make provision for all claimant types. - Meanwhile, we will expand our current pathfinder service [A] and develop functionality so that from next summer we progressively start to take claims for Universal Credit from ...

They have chosen the unachievable, unrealistic, wasteful, unproven, no idea option.

The Statement also says: “Rightly for a programme of this scale, the Government’s priority has been, and continues to be, its safe and secure delivery. This has already been demonstrated in our approach to date”.

Null hypothesis: what that adds up to is misfeasance in public office.

Can anyone disprove that hypothesis?


Updated 15.6.18

"There is a decision to make in the next few days that could waste hundreds of millions of pounds of public money" – that's what we said getting on for five years ago in November 2013.

Now the National Audit Office (NAO) have reported.

Option A above is known at DWP as the "live service", and the NAO say that: "The Department spent £837 million on live service, making it available to single claimants nationwide and to couples and families with children in north-west England from 2015. The Department closed live service to new claims in December 2017 and expects to decommission it in July 2019".

£837 million down the misfeasance drain.

There's more in the NAO report. As ever, Tony Collins has a level-headed summary.

Universal Credit and GDS – think twice

"Agile" is not a silver bullet

Universal Credit is a damsel in distress

but the Government Digital Service is not a white knight

A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) report has been leaked to the Guardian, please see Universal credit: £120m could be written off to rescue welfare reform.

Universal Credit (UC) is DWP's system to spring the poverty trap and make work pay.

UC is in a mess. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on developing the system and there is very little if anything to show for it.

What to do?

Central plank of the 2015 UK election campaign temporarily unavailable

Monday was a big day that week. 23 September 2013 was the deadline for suppliers to put in their bids.

'Submitting for G-Cloud 4? Don’t leave it to the last minute', it said on the G-Cloud blog. This is the fourth version of G-Cloud. There's a new version twice a year. Miss the deadline, and their services couldn't appear for sale on the CloudStore, the UK government-sponsored supermarket in the ether for cloud computing, for another six months. 'One week to go – a few extra tips on submitting for G-Cloud 4'. Etc ...

Then time was up. All those eager candidates who handed in their scripts on time just had to sit back and wait for their exam results.

The examiners put out a bulletin a few days later, on 26 September 2013: "G-Cloud was set up to be a new platform for the public sector to buy ICT ..., specifically cloud services, in a simpler, clearer and faster way".

"Simpler, clearer and faster"? Haven't you heard that somewhere before?

Yes, you have, it's the slogan on GDS's GOV.UK, "the best place to find government services and information". That's the Government Digital Service's way of reminding all the applicants that GDS are in charge of G-Cloud now, and have been since 1 June 2013.

Two weeks later, 10 October 2013, GDS blogged again: "If you've applied for G-Cloud 4 you should be hearing shortly as to whether you have been successful. Your services will then be listed in the CloudStore ...".

Talking of which,GDS put out this tweet:

CloudStore will be unavailable from 9am (GMT) Mon 28 - Tues 29 Oct 2013 while we update services for the G4 framework. — G-Cloud (@G_Cloud_UK) October 25, 2013

The candidates were duly notified of their exam results and jubilant tweets started to appear from the successful ones:

UK Backup Limited Announces the availability of its services on G-Cloud 4 http://t.co/PfEmMR18vh @G_Cloud_UK #gcloud #cloudstore — UK Backup (@UKBackupltd) October 29, 2013

We got @G_Cloud_UK ! So pleased to announce selection to provide Due Diligence services under Lot 4! #gcloud #duediligence #cloud — Advice Cloud (@AdviceCloud) October 29, 2013

Looking for responsive, skilled & perfectly formed ICT supplier? #Damovo success with #gcloud framework! @g_cloud_uk http://t.co/naGqPCZ8K1 — Damovo (@damovouk) October 29, 2013

Etc ... Lots of proud SMEs, all looking forward to selling their wares on the CloudStore. You get the picture.

Except that, if you logged on to the CloudStore on Monday 28 October 2013, this was the picture:

And that was the picture on 29 October 2013. Not a supplier or a product in sight.

And on 30 October 2013. The shop was still shut.

And on 31 October 2013 until just gone 5 o'clock. Four days. As Chris Chant would say, "unacceptable".

What was it that ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, the executive director of GDS and the prophet of so-called "agile" computing, said after he attended a Cabinet meeting on 29 October 2013?

Most encouraging for me though was hearing from ministers just how strongly the principles behind our work have resonated with them. The questions they asked all came from the perspective of ‘What does this mean for users? How does it meet their needs?’ Starting with the needs of users has led to a radical shift in the way we build and provision government services. That’s a huge thing. It means an end to big IT, it means smarter and cheaper services which meet users needs, and it means digital sitting at the heart of teams all around government.

For four days his users were left with no service.

The previous week he'd been in Washington DC, joining in the criticism of the ObamaCare website, debunking the big IT suppliers and making the point that failures like that can be avoided, if you've seen the light, by adopting an agile approach:

What is your reaction to HealthCare.gov and what you're reading and seeing regarding failures of what was meant to be an Expedia shopping for health coverage? Yeah ... I'll say this with no sense of enjoyment whatsoever, but it feels a bit like Groundhog Day to where we were three or four years ago. Hundreds of millions of dollars, large-scale IT enterprise technology, no real user testing, no real focus on end users, all done behind a black box, and not in an agile way but in a big waterfall way, which is a software methodology. And basically not proven good value, and I'm afraid to say I've got example after example in the U.K. in the past where we've had that experience. So it looks just like one of those. My hope is that the current shockwaves of what you're going through here are strong enough to implement a new approach and actually to get political will behind having digital skills in the center. Because delivery is the only thing that will solve this problem ...

Delivery, eh? And user needs. It's not just "big IT" that fails.

Let's hope that the government aren't hoping to make an electoral issue out of GDS and the "smarter and cheaper services which meet users needs" that they promise. For four days no services were available at all. Just ask any of the new boys in the school, like UK Backup, Advice Cloud and Damovo above. Just ask any of their appalled clients. Groundhog Day, indeed.

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Update 1.11.13:

@G_Cloud_UK Hi, any news on when suppliers will be able to access the #cloudstore admin area to edit their services? — Joe Gardiner (@Joe_Gardiner) November 1, 2013

finally on #cloudstore http://t.co/rDx9tHIdro thanks @G_Cloud_UK ! #cloud #gcloud — Advice Cloud (@AdviceCloud) November 1, 2013

Central plank of the 2015 UK election campaign temporarily unavailable

Monday was a big day that week. 23 September 2013 was the deadline for suppliers to put in their bids.

'Submitting for G-Cloud 4? Don’t leave it to the last minute', it said on the G-Cloud blog. This is the fourth version of G-Cloud. There's a new version twice a year. Miss the deadline, and their services couldn't appear for sale on the CloudStore, the UK government-sponsored supermarket in the ether for cloud computing, for another six months. 'One week to go – a few extra tips on submitting for G-Cloud 4'. Etc ...

Then time was up. All those eager candidates who handed in their scripts on time just had to sit back and wait for their exam results.

The examiners put out a bulletin a few days later, on 26 September 2013: "G-Cloud was set up to be a new platform for the public sector to buy ICT ..., specifically cloud services, in a simpler, clearer and faster way".

"Simpler, clearer and faster"? Haven't you heard that somewhere before?